A little horse sense helpsgroom office teamwork

October 19, 2005|By Harry Wessel, Sentinel Staff Writer

Nipped twice by different horses, one of which left a bruise on her arm, audit manager YuTien Chi could be forgiven if she never wanted to get near a horse again. The daylong team-building session for managers of the Deloitte & Touche accounting firm wasn't supposed to involve injuries.

But Chi, known to her friends and colleagues as TC, forgave the horses and wore her bruise with pride. She loved the unusual team-building session at the Arabian Nights attraction in Kissimmee, which involved learning about and working with horses as a way to improve communication and teamwork at the office.

The six-hour "Venturing Awareness" seminar, led by Arabian Nights co-founder Galen Miller, was a "combination of education, a ropes [team-building] course, and a team-bonding exercise," said Mike Harding, managing partner of Deloitte's downtown Orlando office. Harding participated in the seminar along with eight other managers from the office.

While "not inexpensive," he said the $1,500 fee was money well spent "if we get a shared experience that everybody feels positive about."

Chi, whose last experience with a horse had been falling off one as a teenager, was positive enough after the seminar to talk excitedly about riding lessons for herself and her husband. She figured her two children, ages 4 and 6 months, were still a few years off from learning to ride.

More to the team-building point, the 30-something Chi said she learned some valuable lessons about nonverbal communication that will help her at work. Miller showed how horses communicate with their ears, their eyes, their mouths. "The subtleness of their nonverbal communication was eye-opening," Chi said, predicting the heightened awareness of nonverbal cues will help her in dealing with fellow workers and clients.

That's the idea with such horse-human sessions. At least one other such program is offered in Central Florida: "Equine Assisted Learning" workshops, led by equine therapist Lorisa Lewis. (She will conduct a free, three-hour introductory session this Saturday at 10 a.m. at Highlife Farms in Orlando.)

In Galen Miller's structured sessions -- which don't begin until everyone pledges to "be responsible for myself and thereby contribute to the safety of those around me" -- each person first learns how to approach and make contact with a horse. Then teams work together to groom a horse, and later to walk with a horse both with and without a lead.

It's all about communication, but not everyone got the message. Tom Zimlich, Deloitte's control assurance manager, met Harding's bottom-line criteria of feeling positive about the day and the time spent with co-workers.

He didn't see much lasting value, however. "As an experience, I thought it was interesting in terms of learning about horses and how they react, said Zimlich, 38. "But I didn't feel it had a profound impact on me beyond that."

His team-building day did have an effect on Zimlich's 5-year-old daughter, who he said "was literally jumping up and down" with excitement when he told her about it afterward.

As for him, "I had a good time. It was nice to get away from the grind, to do something different and spend time with my peers."

That's pretty much to be expected, said Eduardo Salas, a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida who has done extensive research on team-building and team-training programs. There's a big difference between the two, Salas said. Simply put, team training has been shown to be effective, while team building has not.

Most team-building programs "have zero correlation with job performance," he said. Those involved "will be entertained and happy about the experience. But they go back to the job and it hasn't changed. It could be good for morale, but there are short-term benefits only."

TC Chi, who has been through various training sessions in nine years with Deloitte, begs to differ. She views Venturing Awareness as an effective way to teach the "soft skills" of communication and teamwork.

"The classroom environment is controlled; everything works out fine, and you often miss the message," she said. "Here, you have to apply it. We use our brains to make a horse connect with us and, hopefully, become more aware of how we do things differently, how we apply it to people we work with.

"Sometimes, with your staff, the harder you try to force them to do something, the harder it is to get them to do it. It's like that with horses."